How 9/11 conspiracy theories moved into mainstream American politics
Social media and distrust of government has helped disinformation reach increasingly large audiences.
Type the words “9/11 conspiracy theories” into the search bar of YouTube, and there is no shortage of people lining up to tell you what “really” happened.
There are countless videos of commentators like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson giving their hot takes, alongside a seemingly limitless collection of video accounts blaming the CIA, the “deep state”, or the Illuminati. “Inside Job?” reads the thumbnail of one video that has been viewed more than 500,000 times, before it zooms in on footage of the World Trade Center’s two towers on fire on September 11, 2001.
Twenty-five years after two planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York City, killing nearly 3,000 people, the conspiracy theories are still going strong. If anything, they have only continued to gain pace and mutate. While conspiracy theories were once associated with slightly odd people in tin-foil hats swapping improbable theories from their mothers’ basements, since 2016, when “post-truth” was named Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year, they have become an uncomfortable part of our political culture, experts say.
According to Drochon, Trump’s appeal to people who lapped up conspiracy theories galvanised a new voter base of people who were traditionally less politically engaged. “Trump activated those kinds of voters. You had certain people coming out to vote who had not voted previously. You saw something similar in the case of Brexit,” Drochon said, referring to the referendum in the United Kingdom – also in 2016 – that saw more than half of voters opting to leave the European Union (EU).